My preferred knotting method is a Japanese technique which produces tight, even knots. I use a soft-twist silk thread and the strands are usually finished with either sterling silver or vermeil (gold plated sterling silver) French wire.
Alternative techniques and materials may be used from time to time in cases where my regular technique won’t be successful – such as if the pearls have large holes or a variety of different hole sizes in the same strand.
Faux pearls can also be knotted, however older faux pearls with fragile coatings may not tolerate the amount of handling required when knotting so alternative stringing methods may be more suitable.
When bringing pearls in to be restrung, I prefer that they be left on their old stringing material if at all possible as this can make cleaning and rethreading much so much quicker and easier (and therefore less expensive for you).
In most cases your pearls will require some amount of cleaning before being restrung. Because of the time involved the cost of cleaning is additional to stringing costs.
Natural/Cultured Pearls: Unless they are particularly dirty, cultured pearls are usually fairly quick and easy to clean, with cleaning typically take no longer than a few minutes. However, with older or frequently worn strands there can sometimes be a signifcant accumulation of grime (body lotion, perfume, sweat, skin cells etc) around the area where the holes have been drilled, and sometimes even inside the holes themselves. In many cases, the dirt is not even visible to the casual glance, but in all cases it needs to be manually removed before any restringing can be done. Cleaning time varies from strand to strand, with strands of smaller pearls generally taking longer than their larger counterparts.
Artificial (including Old or Heirloom) Pearls: More often than not, strands of old pearls (especially double or triple strands) are actually manmade and because of their age the pearl coating on these old beads can be extremely fragile. You may have noticed areas on your pearls that have worn away or even peeled off. Before being restrung, these pearl beads almost always require cleaning, but because of their fragile nature this cleaning is done by hand - one bead at a time.
1. Restringing WITH Knots:
2. Restringing WITHOUT Knots:
